


No Different From His Father

by orphan_account



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Character Death, F/M, Mild Blood, Minor Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-16
Updated: 2015-04-16
Packaged: 2018-03-23 05:40:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,264
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3756523
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Merlin Ladies Fest Prompt #2: Favourite Guest Character</p>
<p>Kara had good reasons to hate the Pendragons and side with Morgana.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No Different From His Father

**Author's Note:**

> Posted for Prompt 2 for the Merlin Ladies Fest (2015) on Tumblr. Please read tags for any trigger warnings. Hope you enjoy.

The people of the foreign kingdom are gathered in the square of the great castle that looks over the land. Kara keeps her head high as she’s led by Camelot guards through a parting in the crowd, even though her leg is aching and wobbling beneath the minimal weight she’s putting on it. She might be broken on the inside but she doesn’t want to appear that way on the outside. She’s a follower of Morgana, High Priestess of the Old Religion, so she can’t be seen to be weak.

She can see King Arthur up on the balcony, decked out in a red cloak that’s rippling slightly in the breeze, the golden dragon crest stitched to its bright fabric. The colour of the red brings back painful memories and only makes her angry and unsettled. The guards that surround the gallows are decked in the same Camelot red as their king, with the Pendragon crest emblazoned across their chests. Their spears are shining and sharpened to a deadly-looking point, but it doesn’t look like the guards will need to use them because the people are giving the gallows a wide berth.

Perhaps they’re afraid that she’ll use magic against them, but that not possible because of the cold iron manacles clasped around her wrists to prevent any use of magic. It’s an uncomfortable feeling, having her magic suppressed, but she doesn’t think it would bother her as much as it might someone of more power. Her magic isn’t very powerful so there’s not much that needs suppressing. It would surely be an immense pain for Emrys, who she could feel is standing somewhere near the crowd, though she can’t see him. She wonders why she didn’t attempt to tell the king that such a powerful warlock was in the heart of the city, but then again, she probably wouldn’t be believed and it’d be seen as a try to get out of the execution.

She catches glances at the peasants and townsfolk of the kingdom in her peripheral vision. She does truly hate the King Arthur, but there’s no denying he manages to keep his people in a reasonable state, because the state of the peasants surprises her slightly. They look like they have enough to eat and enough money to buy decent clothes – quite the opposite situation she had been in her whole life just because she was a Druid.

Kara thinks back to the life she’s lived harshly in a life without sustainable magic. She normally doesn’t have enough power to do anything even minimal, and only when she’s feeling deep emotion does she have anything reasonably powerful. A power such as Mordred’s would have been a blessing to her. As her thoughts switch to Mordred she feels slightly sick in the stomach as the reality of the situation hits her again, but she doesn’t let her cool and stern expression flicker. Mordred won’t take her death easily, after everything they’ve been through in their lives. Kara thinks for a moment that maybe, if she’d repented her crimes, she could have made a new life in Camelot with Mordred, where they could both be happy, instead of continuing and getting into situation she’s in currently. But no, the Pendragon King knew she had magic and would never spare her life even if she had repented her crimes. He and his father have been mercilessly reaping misery on her kind since day one; she wouldn’t be able to change the young king’s ways.

Even if he had let her live, she would never have repented her crimes anyway. She has a right to fight for what she believes in – a world where magic is accepted – and a few words from the son of the man that started the problem aren’t going to make her change her mind. For half a second she thinks that, maybe, if she’d been happier with her magic, she wouldn’t have gone down this path. It’s not true though; she knows her hatred of Camelot wasn’t caused by her lack of powerful magic. True, that might have made her a little bit angry at some times, but that wouldn’t have been enough to conjure this much hatred within her. This hate of the Pendragon line began long ago, and it’s been there ever since.

When she was young she didn’t know much about Camelot, only that it was the kingdom in which she lived. She’d heard the name Pendragon from the elders of the camp but it never had any meaning because she was too young to understand politics too deeply. Living in a small camp in a forest, she was only taught the basic Druidic principles and a few pretty useless spells that she doesn’t remember now. There were a few other families living in the settlement, but she doesn’t remember any names or faces of anyone apart from those of her parents, her older brother, and Mordred. He was the single child of one of the other families, and he and she had grown up as best friends. She doesn’t remember much else about that time of her life. Her earliest memory from that first Druid camp is from when she was about five or six years old – the whole of the memory is a blur of colours and movement and a jumble of sounds except one thing: Mordred’s face. She’s never forgotten that face.

The bliss didn’t last forever, because she had her first encounter with Camelot knights maybe a year afterwards. Unlike peaceful memories from around the same time, she remembers this one as clearly as she would one from a few days ago. Usually, the camp had minimal contact with other people of Camelot or other kingdoms as Druids were naturally very secretive and private people. They did greet the few travellers and traders that passed through their part of the forest from time to time, but other than that there was no contact. They managed to farm enough food and collect enough water for the few families to survive on, and they were all happy, so when a group of Camelot knights stormed in without any warning it was a surprise.

They arrived in the evening, aloft their majestic, armoured horses, decked in the classic Camelot red with the golden Pendragon crest sewn onto their chests and cloaks. They had with them the sharpest weapons, flaming torches, and an evil intent. As soon as they arrived they dropped their torches on the tents, which caught alight almost instantly. They rampaged through the group, slaughtering everyone who stood still for barely a moment. Her parents fell right before her eyes and her ears were filled with the screams of others being either fleeing or being killed. She was too afraid to move for the first few moments, and was only saved from harm by her brother pulling her out of the way of a knight coming straight at her, with his sword already coated in the blood of her friends. The next second she was running as fast as she could from the place, her hand tightly clasped by her brother’s.

In all the chaos, there was no time to take anything with them so they had with them only their clothes and the minimal force of their combined magic. They travelled over the land alone, scavenging for food and being constantly haunted by the memories of the past days. Kara couldn’t shake the image of her parents being cut down before her eyes, nor the blistering flames reaching high into the treetops, nor the screams of her people and the yells of the murderers in red. Each night, the dreams would get worse, and some nights she would wake up sweating and with tears in her eyes and down her face. She might have been young, but there was already hate in her heart. For the rest of her life she couldn’t see the colour red without the memories of those Camelot knights coming to mind, and in time she grew to hate the colour completely.

“Who were the men that attacked us?” she remembers asking her brother one night as they hid in a small cave.

“They were the knights of Camelot.” he had said bitterly.

“But we live in Camelot. Why would they attack people from their own kingdom?”

Her brother was older than her by a many years so she expected that he knew everything that she needed to know. He was almost an adult so sometimes he was allowed to go to meetings between the actual adults, so he did have a small grasp on what was going on outside of the camp before it was attacked.

“Because we’re Druids.”

“Why do they hate Druids?”

“Because we practise magic. The King Uther and his son Prince Arthur don’t like magic so they kill everyone if they’re found to have it.”

“I don’t like the Pendragons.”

“Neither do I, Kara. We have to be very careful after the attack because they probably know that a few of us escaped. They might be looking for us.”

Luckily, there seemed to be no knights on their tail, but they forever kept an eye out for a speck of red in the distance or through the trees, just in case. It worried her, but soon the worry became a constant feeling in her stomach and not seem out-of-place.

There was another thing that was making her stomach stir with worry – Mordred. She hadn’t seen him since the attack. She hoped he was alive but she feared the worst, because she knew that most of the camp perished in the assailment. For a long time, she pondered on the thought of Mordred being dead, and before long she had to accept that she’d never see him again. She was young and Mordred had only been a friend, but after the loss of her parents and friends, she had experienced more than many older than her.

“He’s in a better place, where he won’t be hunted for his magic,” her brother had said one night. “He’ll be fine.”

Kara knew that her brother was just saying that Mordred was dead and had gone to Heaven, but it was nice having him put it in such a poetic form.

They managed to contact another Druid settlement that was further hidden from sight and mind, and they sought refuge there. The new camp was a beautiful place, quite larger than the old camp, and magic was practised more openly and seriously than her first home. She stayed there for a long few months before anything interesting happened.

There had been word going around the adults of the camp that there had been multiple sightings of a pair – a Druid and his son – getting themselves in quite a bit of trouble while trying to find their way to a safe camp. Maybe for a second there had been a flicker of hope that the son might be Mordred, but common sense told her otherwise. Mordred was gone; she wouldn’t see him again.

Her denial meant she was surprised when Mordred did appear again, roughly a week after first hearing the rumour. He was in good shape except for a scar from where a guard had wounded him while he was running through the castle. As soon as Kara had heard the quiet voices of Mordred and a few adults returning to the camp, she sprinted over and smothered her friend in the strongest embrace she could manage for her size.

Mordred later told her and an adult that needed to know the story as well that he had managed to run away from the attack on the camp with his father, and that they were trying to steal food so they could make their way back to a Druid safe haven. Unfortunately, the Camelot guards found them, and they got separated. His father was caught and King Uther had him executed. He got a bit teary-eyed and shaky at this part, and the adult gave him a drink of something which seemed to relax him a bit. He then said that he wasn’t found by the guards because he was helped by Emrys, who was Prince Arthur’s manservant and friends with Lady Morgana, who was a witch and King Uther’s ward. It was all very confusing to Kara, but the adult who was also listening seemed to make more sense of it than she did.

Mordred then said that it was Arthur Pendragon and his friends had helped him recover from his wound and escape, and it was actually the Prince himself that helped him escape from the castle and reach the Druid safe haven. Kara didn’t want to believe Mordred at first, after everything her brother had told her about the Pendragons and Camelot. She stubbornly accepted it, telling herself that the Prince must have had another reason to keep Mordred alive. It was under the orders of a Pendragon that the knights in red had attacked and killed her parents and many more, and she knew, even at her young age, that she’d never be accepting of the Pendragons.

“It was very nice of him.” Mordred told Kara after the adult had gone away to tell the other adults.

“I don’t like Arthur Pendragon.” Kara had said stubbornly. “He is the son of King Uther and both of them hunt and kill people with magic, including Druids. They’re the reason why our parents and all our other friends and family are dead.”

“I don’t think Prince Arthur is like his father.”

“I don’t care. I don’t like him.”

After a few moments of silence Kara spoke.

“How did you know that the man you met was actually Emrys?”

“I don’t know, I just could. He wasn’t a Druid, but he was very powerful. I could talk to him in my head, so that helped. He also did some magic. I don’t think anyone else saw it. He was very kind.”

“I want to meet him.”

And so life continued as normal, with Mordred added to the slowly- but ever-increasing number of Druids taking refuge in the camp. She’d heard rumours that the number of patrols attacking camps were increasing and many had been migrating to this haven, one of the few that hadn’t been attacked yet.

She remembers that a woman was once brought into the camp, maybe a year after Mordred returned. She was very beautiful, with long dark hair and pale skin. She’d been in the forest at night and serkets had stung her. Kara had never had an encounter with the serkets because she never went into the forest at night but she had heard stories of people meeting their doom because of their deadly poison. Mordred seemed to have a fondness for the new lady and stayed with her a lot, and Kara didn’t understand until Mordred told her that she was Lady Morgana. She was King Uther’s ward and she had magic, but it wasn’t very strong yet. Kara didn’t like her too much because Mordred was spending more time with the new person rather than herself. Even so, she was curious, and wanted to talk to her and ask how horrible the Pendragons were, and why she was there, and how hard it was to keep her magic secret from everyone so she wouldn’t be killed.

And then another man arrived, and Mordred told her that he was Emrys. He did match the description he’d given Kara almost a year before and Kara could sense something very powerful about him, so it made sense, but she was made even more jealous. She didn’t understand why, though. Emrys was friendly with the Lady Morgana, and Kara watched on at both of them with curious apprehension, wondering what it would be like to know them like Mordred did. However, she’d get bored of watching quickly, so she’d spend a lot of time with her brother, who was getting very mature and helped a lot around the camp.

There seemed to be no problem with the two new people at the camp, except it was barely a day after Emrys arrived that there was another attack. It was knights of Camelot again, too. They all wore the distinctive red that Kara had learned to hate, and this time they had monstrous dogs that send loud howls echoing all around. Not all the men were on horseback this time; many were on foot, and all of them had a weapon in hand, whether it be a sword, spear or crossbow. This time, a lot of people were killed. As everyone in the camp scrambled and ran for safety, arrows were fired and people were falling dead in all directions. Tents were torn down, buckets and pots kicked over and fires trampled.

Kara had been with her brother in their tent when they arrived, looking through a chest for some papers that her brother needed. They didn’t see the arrow coming, but it came through the tent material and right into her brother’s chest. He fell, blood pooling all around him, and he died within a minute. Kara was too scared for someone her age; she didn’t know what was happening. She ran out of the tent and before she knew what she was doing a majestic tree branch had fallen on a knight that was charging towards her. She screamed that she’d just killed a man but that only caused the branch to catch fire, sending waves of heat in all directions.

She had seen Mordred run off with Lady Morgana, Emrys and another man so she couldn’t go and find them, her brother was dead and she didn’t know where her remaining living friends were. She ran further into the chaos, where people were still dashing about, either killing or being killed. She dodged an arrow speeding her way from somewhere above her, before managing to find a few other girls she was friends with, and they all ran out of the place. They fled far from the camp, taking with them as little as they could. After that, the hate for the Pendragons rose and filled her completely, and it never wavered.

The next few years seemed to pass in a blur or running, hiding, hate, death and destruction. The Pendragons didn’t stop their attacks on the magical population and every time there was news of another Druid camp being attacked or an execution in Camelot, her stomach would bubble with fury and her fists would clench so hard her fingernails would cause her palms to bleed. Sometimes she might take out her anger with magic on something nearby, whether it was a tree or an animal or a friend. Her friends understood though; they’d all lost almost every one of their own families, whether it was in that single attack or in multiple attack throughout their lives. They helped each other through the hard times, and Kara couldn’t think of another group of friends she’d rather spend her time with. She still missed Mordred, of course, but like the last time she thought he was lost forever, she painfully accepted it and went on with her life. Her dreams were forever haunted with memories of her brother and parents being slaughtered and the men in red mercilessly culling everyone she ever knew.

It was years later when it was declared that the Lady Morgana’s allegiance was against Camelot with her attack on Camelot and attempt to take the throne. The rumours about what actually happened sounded preposterous, so Kara didn’t pay much attention to them apart from the recurring facts that must have been true. Kara understood why Morgana changed sides; the Pendragons were evil and had reaped misery on her kind from day one. She did wonder, though, what may have caused such a change of heart.

Over the years, Kara and her friends moved from place to place, eventually ending up with a group of Saxons that were on Morgana’s side, and they joined them. These Saxons didn’t have magic but they weren’t against it like the Pendragons were, so they were safe with them.

It was years later, when Morgana officially declared war against Camelot. It was Kara and her fellow Saxons that were amongst the first to openly declare they were fighting with Morgana. It was certain that this war would have many battles where they would be needed to fight for their cause, so Kara and her friends spent years developing their magic and fighting skills as much as they could. It made Kara furious that her magic wasn’t improving, and at multiple occasions she would break down in tears, believing that she would never be able to help fight Camelot with magic as useless as hers. She sometimes wished that she was killed in the numerous attacks she’d witnessed and been a part of, but then she’d remember her parents and brother and friends who had all been slaughtered under orders of the Pendragons, and the fighting spirit would come back to her. The Pendragons, and Camelot, that had to pay the price for what had happened to countless of her kind.

It was with some same Saxons that Kara attacked an arms shipment bound for Camelot, and it was those friends that she lost in the fight. They’d converged on the cart and the soldiers walking by it, and they sprung to action, taking down as many of the soldiers as they could. It wasn’t too far into the fight that the tide turned. The sword she was using was getting heavy in her hand, and she was worried that they were going to all be killed. Her friends that were Druids were trying to use magic, but they were being cut down before they could complete the words. She desperately wanted to help, but she couldn’t think of anything she could do that would be useful.

Her friends were falling left right and centre. The friends that had supported her when her magic failed her. The friends that ran from the Camelot attacks on their Druid camps with her. The friends that sided with Morgana with her. The friends that cared for her when she cried over her lost family. The friends that _became_ her family.

As she was thinking, an arrows soared towards her from someone’s crossbow and embedded itself in her leg. Her knees began to buckle, a burning fire soaring though her leg, blood dripping onto the leaves at her feet. She couldn’t control it, she was already pretty emotional, and now in a lot of pain, and she couldn’t keep it in.

She screamed.

The fighters dropped.

Her friends fell.

There was silence.

They were all dead, even her friends that had been fighting with her, had fallen down dead. She’d killed them without meaning to. Her magic had acted of its own accord and done something worse to her than death.

She leant down, pulled the arrow out of her leg, and ran. She hid for maybe a day, contemplating whether she should just give up and hand herself over, but then Mordred found her and a new feeling sparked, but she didn’t know why she hadn’t felt it before. It was love, and she accepted it. Mordred was back and she was amazed, but the fact that he was a knight of Camelot almost made her feel sick in the stomach. How could someone she knew had lost everything to the Pendragon line become a knight for one, she never understood. But she loved Mordred, and that was enough.

But then King Arthur and Emrys walked in on her hiding place, and she couldn’t keep her anger bottled up. They’d convinced Mordred to take the wrong side in the war, and she didn’t forget the pain and misery he’d caused her a hundreds – maybe thousands – of others. She tried to kill the king and she knew that Emrys had stopped her when her dagger missed its mark. That interference led to her being taken to Camelot, the two trials she was given, her refusing the repent her crimes, and now the hanging.

She’s at the hanging gallows now; it’s been half a minute but she can remember a lifetime’s worth of reasons why she’s gone down this path. She thinks back to Mordred in the cells, who almost certainly knows that the one he loves is about to be killed. He’ll know that it was King Arthur that had her executed, and Kara knows that he won’t trust the King again. Maybe that’s why she was sent down this path, to turn Mordred against Arthur Pendragon.

As she’s ushered up the stairs of the gallows she wonders what Mordred’s going to do after she’s been killed. As the noose is wrapped around her neck she looks straight up and unblinkingly at Arthur Pendragon on the balcony, sending him a stern but deadly glare. Her thoughts flicker back to Mordred one last time. She can just hear him through the telepathic bond they share, and he’s crying.

The man who was handling the noose steps away. She continues to glare at the Pendragon King. He nods, the trapdoor drops, the noose tightens and she can’t breathe. She hears Mordred’s telepathic scream.

The noose painful and restricting her breathing and she’s losing consciousness. She hopes that this type of death is quick. In her last thoughts, one stands out overall:

Arthur Pendragon deserves everything that’s coming to him.


End file.
